


Hold on, Take Shelter (i'll get you out of the cold)

by Yourwinedarksea (yourwinedarksea)



Category: Wiedźmin | The Witcher - All Media Types
Genre: F/M, Hypothermia, POV Second Person, Reader-Insert, cuddling for warmth
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-14
Updated: 2020-01-14
Packaged: 2021-02-27 13:47:33
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,444
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22258201
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yourwinedarksea/pseuds/Yourwinedarksea
Summary: It’s the sound that surprises you first.Like a tree cracking, like a bolt of lightning that breaks the sky wide—But you lose it all to the cold.The world falls out from beneath you and you suck in a gasp that’s the starting edges of his name—But your chest freezes, your body seizes and there’s no thought in your head at all but a cut-throat desperate sort of panic that steals everything—There’s no up, there’s no down, there’s only the weight of your body, the need for air, the need to get out get out get out—
Relationships: Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia/Original Female Character(s), Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia/Reader
Comments: 10
Kudos: 399





	Hold on, Take Shelter (i'll get you out of the cold)

**Author's Note:**

> First attempt at a reader/second POV fic, trying something new for the following prompt on Tumblr:  
> While fighting a monster they both fall through ice into freezing water and Geralt gets her out and has to keep her warm by stripping them both down and cuddling by a fire but it’s really angsty because she’s basically frozen? And fluffy when she gets better.

* * *

one

* * *

It’s the sound that surprises you first.

Like a tree cracking, like a bolt of lightning that breaks the sky wide—

But you lose it all to the cold. 

The world falls out from beneath you and you suck in a gasp that’s the starting edges of his name—

But your chest freezes, your body seizes and there’s no thought in your head at all but a cut-throat desperate sort of _panic_ that steals _everything—_

There’s no up, there’s no down, there’s only the weight of your body, the need for air, the need to get _out_ _get_ _out get out—_

The water churns around you, and for some reason, you think about a summer day in the waters of Toussaint, diving into the water, screams in your ears that are all laughter and sunshine and sea-salt. A pair of arms, thick and sun-warmed, and—

 _Geralt_ , you think. _Geralt_.

There’s nothing but your heartbeat in your ears, louder than anything, louder than the crack of the ice, louder than the Akhlut’s dying screams—

_Geralt._

There’s a lesson somewhere in the back of your mind, a rough voice with rough hands saying, _get up—_

 _Get up,_ you think, _get up._

The water churns, and your limbs get heavier, pushing through the blackness, your leathers, your layers, weighing you down. _Get up, get up._

The cold bites at you, as sharp as a hundred hungry mouths, little daggers that take nicks out of your skin, sink into your lungs—

And there’s a brush of something along your back, and for a second you think it’s the Akhlut, its whale-wide jaw opening for one last meal, one last bite, to drag you down and down—

But then you’re gasping, sucking in a breath of air that’s colder than anything you’ve felt before. Feels like you’ve swallowed a blade, feels like it cuts you open even as it sears you closed again.

Your body moves, even when you aren’t sure you’re telling it to, grabbing at the ice with numb, blue-tipped fingers; there’s a sound, a rumble, a vibration around you, and it takes you the sight of a broad hand beside yours to understand.

 _Geralt_ , you gasp, but it’s nothing more than a ragged inhale, chattering teeth, the clatter of your bones like a witch’s windchimes.

Your breath puffs, thick and white and uneven in front of you, his brushes the side of your face…and the water is warmer, the water is _so much warmer_ , but he’s pushing you forward and up and you’re grasping at the ice, clawing at it, the crunching snow already freezing against your fingertips, frost crawling along your leathers as you haul yourself forward, as he shoves you up onto the ice, his voice in your head where it always is when you need it most.

_Get up._

_(Together?_ He’d laughed, _you think that’s a good idea?_

 _No,_ you’d said _, but what’s that matter?)_

There’s that sound again, that feeling against your back, and it takes you moments, hours, _seconds—_ of blinking up at the white sky, takes you the cold flinching drip of water hitting your face, the blur of white hair, of yellow eyes, to realise it’s his voice— his lips moving, his hands on your cheeks, just as cold and unsteady as your teeth are, chattering and clacking inside your mouth.

 _Stay awake,_ he says and you blink, the cold, hard tips of his hair brush scrape your face— and then he’s gone and you think _get up—_

But the world’s moving again and it’s filled with crunching, too bright snow and a cold like the Akhlut’s screams, sharp and high and bone-chilling, the scrape of ice against ice, or the scream of metal against metal, breaking through your mind until there’s nothing else but the pitch of it.

And then there isn’t anything, not really, the world moves like those times when you were a girl, spinning round and round and round until the world was just a blur of colours and there was nothing but the spin of your dress, your bare feet in warm grass and your own laughter.

That rumble comes again, farther away, like a rockslide in the distance, an echo along a mountainside—

_Stay awake._

* * *

* * *

The town is small, nothing more than wood cabins around the shore of the frozen lake, a poor little fishing village he hadn’t thought worth the time. But she’d heard the desperation in people who lived there, the stories about the boats disappearing, about the bodies never found and he’d never been all that great at saying no to her, so he’d said _yes,_ said _fine,_ said _that’s not funny_ when she’d looked at him, a smile on her mouth no matter the cold biting at her cheeks and said, _at least if we die out there, Jaskier will have a great story to tell._

And now, she’s blue-lipped and his heart is in his throat because she stopped shaking sometime between him pulling her over his shoulder, between the ice creaking beneath their combined weight and his prayers, like the crunch of snow and each footfall more—

_Don’t you dare take her from me._

And the cabin, a little, crooked thing belonging to a dead man, is cold and dark and the door doesn’t even latch properly when it slams shut behind them, but there’s a fireplace, and dry wood and he shrugs her off his shoulder like she’s nothing more than another dead thing already— And they both hit the floor too hard, but she’s nothing more than dead-weight in his arms, and it’s stealing more and more of his logic the longer she stays blue and too still and too fucking _quiet._

“Wake up,” he growls through his own chattering teeth, his hands on her stiff leathers, the moonlight painting her into a blue-tinged corpse that steals chunks out of his heart. “Wake the _fuck_ _up_.”

“Igni!” he growls, throwing his hand out towards the dark fireplace. It bursts into life, painting the room in a bright orange glow. He feels the heat of it, but it’s second to anything else, sets his hands to her leathers, the rigged, frozen-solid weight of them and fumbles his dagger twice before he can grip it well enough to start cutting.

* * *

* * *

It’s the tugging that hits you first, then the sound, the well-known _snick_ of a knife—

A drop of water hits your face and you twitch, the sound comes again, your body jerking as you feel your leathers being tugged up then snapped loose.

_Snick—_

Your body jerks again and there’s a noise in your throat and you can’t feel your lips but his name is in your mouth anyway, the only thing in your head, his face above yours, his hair dripping, tinted yellow in the glow of a fire.

 _Geralt,_ you think, mouth, try to make your throat work—

The tugging doesn’t stop, the _snickrip_ sounds continue and it’s the colder air hitting your skin that makes the first sound come out of your throat.

His hand is cold, unsteady, spreads wide on the side of your face, pushing hair away from your cheeks and eyes and his eyes are like gold, you think, but his lips are like ice, stealing more of your air when his mouth hits yours, hard and angry, desperate and bruising— and then he’s gone again.

The ripping sound comes again and your mind starts piecing together what he’s doing as his dagger cuts through another section of frozen layers, slices through your leathers and underthings until he’s moving out of sight entirely and there’s nothing but the cabin ceiling painted in the reaching firelight, your numb fingers trying to feel the rough wood beneath you and Geralt’s hands tugging off your clothes.

“D-don’t th-think’m in the m-mood—”

“Shut up,” he growls, and you almost whine when he disappears again, but you can feel the _thunk_ of his boots in the vibration in the wood floor, the rough-edged curse— the plat of heavy, wet clothes and another curse— And then there are stale blankets, a musty pillow and _Geralt._

His skin is just as cold as yours, but he’s pulling you into him and there’s rough wool and more blankets and he sinks you both under layer after layer of them, manhandling you until he’s curled around you and his heartbeat is beating like a drum chest, until your breathing into his neck, that familiar place you’ve tucked yourself so many times before.

Geralt’s hand bruises up along your spine, pulling you tighter into him, and you close your eyes, pressing your cold nose into the stubble along his neck and breathe him in as you feel the first real edges of warmth, the fire at your back and his body, pressed like a selkie-skin against yours.

You breathe out.

There’s a hand in your hair, pulling through the tangled strands, a pulse-beat beneath your cheek and familiar smell you’d know anywhere.

_Geralt._

You press your lips to his skin, your head pounds, but your warm, so warm in every place his skin touches yours that you don’t mind any of the aches in your body so long as he stays pressed up against you.

His hand stills and you feel him pull in a deeper breath, the shift of his hard chest, the slight scratch of his chest hair and you can’t help but press your mouth to it, too. Your lips weak, your mind slow, his hand spreading along your cheek, tilting your head up, cupping it until his face is all you can see and you’re sure you’re all he sees, just the same.

It’s a strange feeling, took you so long to get used to, knowing that for whatever reason, however it happened, you mean more to each other than either of you could properly say.

His eyes meet yours and you want to make a joke, want to pull the moment into something lighter, to chase off the weight of that haunted thing lingering in his eyes… but he strokes his thumb along your cheek, brushes it along the corner of your mouth and there’s nothing but his eyes, his thumb, his body and heartbeat and _him_ for so long that when he finally presses his lips to yours again…

It feels like the first real breath you’ve ever taken.

“Easier ways to get me naked,” you say, your head pillowed on his arm, looking at the thick of his fingers, lit by the fire, resting relaxed against the floor. He’s got one arm stretched out, the other still curved around your waist and holding you tucked against him, still a little bit too tight, but you aren’t going to complain, because the moments you get to do this are few and far between when you spend most of your time travelling and making camp in forests or small inns where the looks you both garner never make for easy resting.

He grunts behind you, his fingers twitching, his arm pulling you tighter, somehow. “Not funny.”

You smile against his arm, squirming beneath the weight of him, finally able to feel your own fingers and toes outside of just that aching-burn of near-frostbite.

Geralt is like a fire of his own behind you, warmer than the crackling wood still roaring in the fireplace, and you can feel your skin sticking to his beneath the blankets, all the way from the back of your legs and thighs to your neck, where his mouth presses, his breath warm and soft.

“And I don’t need excuses to get you naked,” he mumbles, his hand spreading against your stomach. You smile, lifting your head and turning your neck towards him, feeling his hand sliding up your body, the too-wide width of his hand on your neck. “Hm?”

“No,” you say and let him press his mouth to the side of yours as his thumb brushes your pulse. “But perhaps we should stick to warmer water from now on.”

His breath puffs and you can feel his smile as sure as you can see it. “If you can stick to not caring about every poor fucking town we come across.”

You laugh. “Rich words for a man who does the same.”

“Not a man,” he grunts, nipping at your jaw, his hand tightening just a little on your throat in a way that makes your heart skip, makes your hips twitch back into his lap, feeling just how much he is a man and yet, more than one, all at once.

“Strange. You feel like a man,” you tease and push back more, squirming beneath his weight, the slip of your skin pressed so tightly against his, the heat beneath the blankets almost too much now, if it weren’t for the heady appeal of building it more, building it into a pyre until you both burnt up beneath it.

“A lesson, then?” he says lowly, that rough edge to his voice you know means just as much as the cock pressing against your ass.

“Sound like a man, too,” you tease, but you gasp when his teeth scrape your pulse, his head turning, his hand sinking beneath the blankets, his chest rumbling with a growl that is, in some way, less like a sound a man should make and more like something wild, something ready to eat you alive.

You’re more than fine with it, you think, to be swallowed by him.

And he does, slowly, so slowly, with his mouth hot against the back of your neck, the sharp of your jaw, his arm curving until some way tucked into his side, your leg pulled back over his, his hand spread on your chest; his cock hotter than the fire, moving in and out of you in smooth rolling thrusts as slick as the sweat gathering on your skin in every place you’re pressed against him.

It’s too hot, too slow, and your sure your burning from the inside out, but his voice, when it comes, is ragged with more than just sex and heat, hot against your neck, so low it’s a rumble against your spine.

“Stay with me.”

There’s no answer to give him but another gasp, your hand slipping on his where he grips your hip to hold you to him as he pushes deeper and deeper until there’s no end to you and no beginning to him, just the slide of your skin and a promise you can’t make any more than he can.

But still, your fingers thread through his, and the grip you both take, is more than enough for now. 

* * *

**Author's Note:**

> Also here: https://yourwinedarksea.tumblr.com/post/190256447133/hold-on-take-shelter-ill-get-you-out-of-the


End file.
